AnchorFree Hotspot Shield is robust VPN service with a slick interface, but it's held back by poor speed-test performance and a high price tag.

Virtual private networks, or VPNs, like AnchorFree's Hotspot Shield, are critically important tools. They protect our online activity from the prying eyes of attackers on insecure networks, and from ISPs that sell our data. While AnchorFree's VPN service is easy to use and includes a slew of features, it is also expensive and turned in lackluster results in our speed tests. We prefer Editors' Choice winners NordVPN, Private Internet Access, and TunnelBear.

What Is a VPN?

When you connect with a VPN, it encrypts all internet activity from your PC and routes the packets through AnchorFree's servers. Anyone on your network watching your traffic or trying to serve you bogus websites won't be able to break into that tunnel. That's great, especially if you find yourself using that sketchy, unsecured Wi-Fi at the local coffee shop.

That's not the only reason you need a VPN, either. Because your internet traffic appears to be coming from AnchorFree's servers, your computer, in turn, appears to have the IP address of that server. That means websites, advertisers, and snoopers have a harder time tracking your movements across the web and discerning your actual location.

While using a VPN is always a wise choice for securing important activities such as online banking transactions, VPNs are essential for accessing the internet while traveling or any time you use a public Wi-Fi network. On a larger scale, people living in countries with restrictive control over internet access can circumvent that control with a VPN. This technology has long been a key tool of activists and journalists.

For some people, VPNs are also a means to access region-locked content. By connecting from the US to a VPN server in the UK, for example, you could watch BBC shows for free instead of paying for BBC America. Note that Netflix is fighting back against this kind of cheating, as are other services.

It's important to know what a VPN can and can't do, however. First and foremost, a VPN provides only limited online anonymity. To really disguise yourself online, you should route your traffic through the labyrinthine Tor network. Also, if you connect to websites or services that don't encrypt traffic via HTTPS, your network traffic may be subject to interception.

There's a good chance that you have never laid hands on a VPN before. If that's the case, don't worry! We've got a whole feature on how to set up and use a VPN.

Pricing and Features

Hotspot Shield has three pricing tiers ranging from a monthly rate of $12.99 to an annual rate of $71.88. Alternatively, you can drop $119.99 on a lifetime subscription, a deal comparable to the Forever subscription from KeepSolid VPN Unlimited.

While I appreciate the range of options, Hotspot Shield's monthly price tag is quite a bit more than the industry average of $10.42. It's more than the already-pricey Editors' Choice winner NordVPN, which costs $11.95 per month, and significantly more than co-winner Private Internet Access, which costs just $6.95 per month.

If none of those plans fits your wallet, you might consider using a free VPN, such as the one provided by AnchorFree. Note that the free version of HotSpot Shield only allows access to servers in the US. The free version also has bandwidth limits that depend on the device you use. All free accounts are capped at 500MB per day. AnchorFree also uses Android resources to deliver occasional interstitial ads. TunnelBear also has a limited free version, but it won't serve you ads if you opt to go that way. ProtonVPN, too, has an impressive free VPN, though its speed is throttled.

VPN Protocols

VPNs are a mature technology, and there's more than one way to create an encrypted tunnel for your traffic. For the most part, you won't have to worry about picking a particular VPN protocol, but I appreciate services that give consumers that option.

The typical VPN service supports multiple VPN protocols and either uses the one it thinks best for a particular situation or allows the user to choose. These usually include new, secure standards like IKEv2 or my preferred option, the open-source OpenVPN. Instead, AnchorFree created its own protocol called Catapult Hydra and uses it exclusively.

To be clear, in creating Catapult Hydra AnchorFree didn't create a new encryption protocol. A new encryption protocol would require an enormous amount of scrutiny since an undiscovered flaw could be used to break it. An AnchorFree representative recently explained that Catapult Hydra uses the Open SSL library to encrypt the data and that the new protocol is simply "an enhancement of the transport protocol." AnchorFree has previously told me that Hydra creates multiple channels for data to travel, with the goal of increasing speed and reliability.

While plenty of other VPN services create their own protocols, AnchorFree Hotspot Shield is the only one I'm aware of that relies exclusively on its own proprietary protocol. I'm always a little leery of security companies that decide to roll their own services when secure, open-source options like OpenVPN exist. I haven't tested the efficacy of AnchorFree's protocol—I'll leave that to the expert researchers.

Servers and Server Locations

When I review VPNs, I look at the number of servers and where those servers are located. The number of servers indicates the service's robustness. The more servers there are, the more bandwidth each person connected to a given server will receive. The number of server locations is also important, but I am more interested in geographic diversity. A lot of different server locations gives you more opportunities to spoof your location, and it also means you're more likely to find a nearby server when traveling.

Hotspot Shield members get just 25 server locations worldwide to choose from, with some 2,500 servers in total. That's a lot of servers, but I'd prefer to see them more widely distributed. Hotspot Shield has servers in Asia, Central America, Europe, North America, and South America. It also maintains servers in areas with restrictive internet access policies, including China, Iran, Russia, and Turkey. Hotspot Shield customers disappointed by its dearth of servers in Africa should consider CyberGhost, which has a few in the region.

Some VPN companies employ what are called virtual servers. These are software-defined servers—a single piece of server hardware running multiple virtual servers onboard. These virtual servers can also be configured to appear in a different location than their host hardware server. Consumers deeply concerned about their privacy may take issue with virtual servers, since your data might be traveling to different countries than you expect.

An AnchorFree representative explained that 20 percent of the servers in the US and Western Europe are virtual servers. But if you're a paying customer, you won't be using any virtual servers. Additionally, all of the VPN servers are physically located exactly where they appear to be. That's not true for services like Hide My Ass and PureVPN.

Your Privacy With AnchorFree Hotspot Shield

As VPNs become an increasingly popular tool to help secure your privacy online, more attention is being given to what VPN companies are doing to protect your privacy. After all, these companies could monitor your activity as much as ISPs already do.

AnchorFree has gone to great lengths to update its privacy policy to be clearer and easily understood, and should be commended for this. However, it still contains several passages that are confusing and worrying without additional context. Its opening two points are continued throughout the document, and are good touchstones of any VPN service:

"Our VPN product will never store or log your IP address beyond the duration of your VPN session, and we always delete your IP address after you disconnect from the VPN.

We do not keep logs of your online activities and never associate any domains, or applications that you access while the Hotspot Shield VPN is connected with you, your device, or your email."

AnchorFree previously injected an ad linking back to a page on its own domain onto webpages visited by users. Considering that attackers inject code into websites to trick users into visiting malicious portals, I don't think legitimate software should ever engage in this practice. Thankfully, AnchorFree confirms that it no longer injects ads into websites—nor do any of the other VPN services in my best-of list.

The only time you see ads with AnchorFree is if you use the free service on the company's Android app. AnchorFree notes that some obfuscated location information is shared with advertisers, although paid customers are not subject to this practice. I'd rather AnchorFree found a way to avoid sharing any location information. From the privacy policy:

"Hotspot Shield does not share your browsing history or any other information you choose to provide, with advertisers. [...] advertisers are prevented from seeing your IP address, however if you are using the free version of Hotspot Shield we may share this approximate (city-level) location. If you are using the premium Hotspot Shield Elite version this approximate city-level location will not be collected and will not be shared."

In its privacy policy, AnchorFree makes mention of gathering aggregate data about the websites users visit. A company representative explained that each VPN server monitors the sites requested, divorced of information about who requests it, in order to determine if services are being blocked or are otherwise unreachable. Using Twitter as an example, the representative said that if the company were to see tens of thousands of requests for Twitter and only a handful the next day, that would be indicative of someone censoring Twitter in a particular region. The company takes pains to say that this information cannot be attributed to a specific user. I was troubled by previous wording regarding this specific issue, but have accepted the explanation and no longer consider it to be an explicit threat to privacy.

Elsewhere in its Privacy Policy is this passage, which at first blush looks quite concerning:

"[...] we and our service providers collect device-specific information, such as the unique mobile ID, hardware model, operating system version, language, and network information. We may also use, but never log or store, your IP address to derive your approximate (city-level) location. We use this information to provide and improve the services, troubleshoot, and perform analytics on our services. Our service providers may collect IP addresses for marketing attribution purposes."

An AnchorFree representative explained these service providers correlate a download to particular website or other "channel." This is part of the company's analytics model, but also its affiliate marketing strategy. The representative explained, "We ensure that these analytics services don't use the data for any other purpose besides attribution of the download to the channel of where this download came from. The information is needed only to know that a device downloaded our application from a specific website."

To its credit, AnchorFree completed a transparency report late in 2017 that outlined the requests it had received for information from law enforcement and governments. In it, the company said it provided no identifiable information, and extensively discussed how AnchorFree Hotspot Shield does not store users' real IP addresses. That's great, as is the effort put forth by the company to make a transparency report in the first place. TunnelBear underwent a code audit to publicly verify its efforts toward customer security. CyberGhost has taken similar efforts.

I appreciate that AnchorFree's privacy policy spells out the limits of what any VPN can provide. For example, it acknowledges that other companies can still track your movements across the web with cookies and beacons, even when the VPN is active. It also spells out nearly every instance of information gathering carried out by the company, why the information is gathered, and how AnchorFree mitigates threats to user privacy. AnchorFree further adds assurances about its ad operations and is emphatic that it does not sell user data. Company representatives have made similar assurances to me directly.

I ask every VPN company to outline how it generates revenue, as it's important to understand whether or not companies are data-mining or otherwise "selling" their customers. My AnchorFree contact said that the company only draws revenue from subscriptions, ads served to free users of the Android app, and company licensing. That is, other companies using AnchorFree's technology and services to deliver VPN to customers. Bitdefender, for example, licensed AnchorFree and now offers VPN protection as part of Bitdefender Antivirus Plus and its security suites. It does say something that so many other companies have signed off on AnchorFree's services, especially those like Bitdefender that stake their reputation on customer security.

Some readers may balk at the advertising based model for the free version of Hotspot Shield, but the company argues that these activities are necessary to deliver a quality product, particularly for free users. Moreover, it contends that what information it collects cannot be tied back to specific individuals. It's also worth noting that AnchorFree's 1GB per day limit is the most generous free VPN services available I have yet reviewed.

In addition to a company's privacy policy, it's important to know where a company is located in order to understand what legal framework it operates under. Some countries, for example, require companies to retain specific information for set periods of time. AnchorFree maintains offices in Delaware, in the US, and in Switzerland. I'm not a legal expert, but what I've read indicates that the US and Switzerland do not have data retention laws that apply to VPNs. In fact, Switzerland is one of the better places to store data, if privacy is a major concern.

I always advise readers to look at a company's policy and decide for themselves if they are comfortable with it. Security companies trade on trust, and if you do not feel that you can personally trust the company, you need to find one you do trust.

Hands On With Hotspot Shield

I had no trouble setting up Hotspot Shield on my Lenovo ThinkPad T460s running Windows 10. Previous versions of the software were pushier than I like to see, affecting the appearance of the browser and such, and I'm happy to see that behavior removed in the current incarnation. Hotspot Shield also no longer installs any toolbars, which is also a step in the right direction.

The Hotspot Shield client looks much more at home on Windows 10 than other VPN apps. It's a simple, dark blue window with cyan highlights and a modern aesthetic. This matters, I think, because how a service looks is probably going to inform how we feel about it. Private Internet Access, for example, barely has a presence on computers and isn't easy on the eyes at all, which makes it less inviting and accessible to the average consumer.

The main page shows upload and download speeds, as well as your apparent IP address. A map in the lower right shows a stylized view of the world and doubles as a VPN server selector. When it's not connected, the app shows a large Power button, encouraging you to start a connection. I like this much more than PureVPN, which has users jump through hoops before connecting.

One notable setting is that Hotspot Shield can be configured to connect automatically on unsafe Wi-Fi networks. That's a great option. While you should use a VPN as often as possible for maximum security, this feature means you don't need to remember to switch on the VPN.

Hotspot Shield and Netflix

Using a VPN often prevents you from accessing Netflix, even if you're connected to a VPN server within the US. The streaming company has been very aggressive about cracking down on people spoofing their location in order to access Netflix content that isn't available in a particular geographic market.

Unfortunately, I was unable to stream the new episodes of Aggretsuko on Netflix while connected to an AnchorFree Hostspot Shield VPN server. That's disappointing. NordVPN, TunnelBear, CyberGhost, KeepSolid VPN Unlimited, and TorGuard VPN are a few VPNs that work with Netflix. Note, however, that any VPN service could work fine today and be blocked tomorrow.

Also, Netflix outlines in section 6c of its Terms of Use that the company will attempt to verify your location, and that you are not guaranteed content outside of your primary country of residence. The document doesn't seem to explicitly ban the use of VPNs, but Netflix clearly takes a dim view of the practice.

Beyond VPN

In addition to securing your traffic, Hotspot Shield can also warn users whenever they land on known phishing websites or sites that host malware (as determined by a database of more than 3.5 million malicious sites). This kind of malware protection is unusual among VPN services, but I did not evaluate Hotspot's malware defenses for this review.

While I am always happy to see VPN companies adding additional security features, I am skeptical of their ability to replace a standalone antivirus solution. While there are definite benefits to screening files and websites at the network level, VPN services are likely focused on making good VPN products and less so on advanced malware detection. That's why, despite these sweetener features, I recommend that consumers run standalone antivirus software on their computers.

Speed and Performance

VPNs work by adding extra distance to the path your web traffic must traverse, and that distance usually has a negative effect on your browsing experience. To get a feel for the impact of using a VPN, I perform a series of tests using the Ookla SpeedTest website. (Note that Ookla is owned by PCMag's publisher, Ziff Davis.)

In my first round of tests, I connect to a local Ookla test server and compare the average test results with and without connecting to a VPN service in the US. This is intended to simulate the situation most users will experience. I then calculate a percent change between the two figures.

To push the service harder, and get a sense for how it performs when connecting to far-flung servers, I choose an Ookla test server in Anchorage, Alaska, and a VPN server in Australia. This is probably more strain than the average person would put on a service, but I find it to be an illuminating test.

In the domestic latency test, AnchorFree Hotspot Shield performed particularly poorly. I found it increased latency by 3,145.5 percent, easily the worst among all the VPNs I have tested. This score is surprisingly bad, and I look forward to testing it again in the future. TorGuard VPN had the best score in this test, actually reducing latency by 6.7 percent. Hotspot Shield's performance was slightly better in the international latency test, where it increased ping time by 400.6 percent. TunnelBear had the best score in this test, increasing latency by 270.3 percent.

Redemption did not come for AnchorFree in the all-important domestic download test, as it again achieved the worst score I've yet recorded. I found that it slowed speeds by 73.5 percent, a far cry from TorGuard VPN, which reduced download speeds by only 3.7 percent. Ironically, Hotspot Shield had the best score in the international download test by a significant margin. In those tests, it only lowered download speeds by 39.9 percent. By way of comparison, the next-best score in that test was GoldenFrog VyprVPN, which reduced download speeds by 55.7 percent.

Sadly, the success of Hotspot Shield was short-lived. It took the second-worst score in the domestic tests, reducing upload speeds by 58.6 percent. IPVanish had the best score in these tests, reducing upload speeds by only 2.9 percent. International upload speeds are tightly clustered together, and AnchorFree was shown to slow upload speeds by 98.4 percent. Private Internet Access has the best score in this test, lowering speeds by 97.3 percent.

In general, I don't believe that speed is the most important factor when choosing a VPN. Value, privacy, and trustworthiness are far more valuable than a quick download. It's also worth noting that my tests can't be viewed as the final word on speed. Network conditions can change on a dime, after all. My tests are more like a snapshot. Despite this, the consistently poor performance of AnchorFree Hotspot Shield is worth considering, especially given its high price.

As far as the fastest VPN goes, that title currently belongs to TorGuard VPN. It eked out a slight latency advantage against the competition and topped the domestic download test—which I consider to be the most important. In the areas where it did not excel, it never disappointed, either.

AnchorFree Hotspot Shield for Android

We haven't had the chance to review the AnchorFree Hotspot Shield Android VPN app. I'll update this review once we get the app and put it through its paces. That said, from what I've seen, it appears to follow the design established with the Windows application, which we appreciate.

AnchorFree Hotspot Shield for iPhone

The last time we reviewed the AnchorFree Hotspot Shield iPhone app, it looked very different. We look forward to updating our review to reflect the recently revamped app. We appreciated its simple, almost elegant design, but struggled to get started. We were also blown away by some of the speed test scores recorded during out testing. That said, we were disappointed by the supported VPN protocols.

While the free version of Hotspot Shield has data restrictions of various volumes for different platforms, that's not the case for iPhone users. Customers with free accounts on iPhone enjoy unlimited data, but are still limited to VPN servers in the US. A paid account is required to access all of the company's servers.

One noteworthy thing not included in the iPhone version when we last reviewed it was AnchorFree's Hydra VPN protocol. Our last review found that the app relied on the older IPSec protocol. It's not surprising that AnchorFree doesn't include OpenVPN in its iPhone VPN app, as Apple requires iOS developers to jump through additional hoops when including that protocol in iPhone VPN apps. Still, it would be better to see a newer protocol, such as IKEv2, instead of IPSec. Of the iPhone VPNs we've evaluated, only VPN Unlimited uses OpenVPN.

AnchorFree Hotspot Shield for Mac

We haven't had the chance to review the AnchorFree Hotspot Shield macOS VPN app. I'll update this review when we get the chance to evaluate the app.

From what we've seen, the app seems very much in line with Apple's established look and feel. It also retains the visual language of the other Hotspot Shield apps. You'll probably feel right at home using it.

Hotspot Shield for Chrome and Firefox Browsers

In addition to its desktop apps, AnchorFree also offers VPN browser plug-ins for Chrome and Firefox. Several VPN companies offer browser plug-ins, but AnchorFree is especially notable because you need neither an account nor a subscription when you connect via these plug-ins. They are completely free.

Free VPN usually means a catch of some kind, and the story is a bit complicated for AnchorFree. If you use the Firefox plug-in, there's no limit on your data and you can use any server you wish, as often as you like. It's totally unlimited. The catch is if you use the Chrome plug-in, you can't connect to US or UK VPN servers, as you can with the Firefox plug-in, but your data is still unlimited. The Chrome plug-in also has links at the bottom of its windows to popular services, which feels a bit like advertising.

I installed the Chrome Extension (there are two, and I tried both) on my Chromebook and found that they both crashed when I attempted to use them. Furthermore, the Extensions manager flagged both as potentially corrupted. This is apparently a known issue with Chromebooks. When I tested the plug-in on Windows in the past, I had no such issues.

Note that while VPN browser plug-ins are convenient, and in this case free, they don't offer as much protection as manually configuring your computer or using the company's desktop. When you use the browser plug-in to connect via VPN, only your browser traffic is secured. Any other data flowing from your computer to the internet won't have that benefit. It's a simple, lightweight solution, but one that's not ideal from a security perspective.

A Shield for Your Hotspot?

AnchorFree Hotspot Shield is one of those frustrating products that ticks many of the correct boxes, but comes up short in a few, important ways. On the plus side, AnchorFree has a robust collection of servers. And while it has comparably few server locations, it offers server locations in locales often ignored by competitors. It also looks good and its interface is easy to understand, even for first-time VPN users. It has a very generous free VPN offering, and a thorough (if sometimes confusing) privacy policy. The company has also gone to enormous lengths to establish its security and privacy bona fides, which we greatly appreciate, and we hope other companies will do the same.

On the downside, Hotspot Shield turned in some very unimpressive speed test scores. It also charges significantly more than most of the competition, which makes it hard to argue as a good value. And while its privacy policy reflects a refreshing level of transparency, it also includes some language that may give consumers pause, even when AnchorFree isn't doing anything nefarious. Security companies operate on trust, and clear, simple language in a privacy policy helps convey that trust.

AnchorFree Hotspot Shield offers a good collection of features, but it was slow in our testing, charges an above average price, and offers a relatively small number of server locations. We continue to recommend our Editors' Choice winners NordVPN, Private Internet Access, and TunnelBear. These services offer more for less, which is a difficult proposition to beat.

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About the Author

Max Eddy is a Software Analyst, taking a critical eye to Android apps and security services. He's also PCMag's foremost authority on weather stations and digital scrapbooking software. When not polishing his tinfoil hat or plumbing the depths of the Dark Web, he can be found working to discern the 100 Best Android Apps.
Prior to PCMag, Max wrote... See Full Bio

AnchorFree Hotspot Shield VPN

AnchorFree Hotspot Shield VPN

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